Onyx reviews: A Keeper by Graham Norton

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 11/13/2018

The Graham Norton Show is a weekly chat show that features actors and comedians promoting their latest work, musicians performing their newest singles and ordinary people from the audience sitting in the big red chair to tell anecdotes. It's clear from this segment that Norton admires a well-told story and, as has been demonstrated by his novels, has a certain panache for telling one, too.

A Keeper is a twisted tale of family secrets coming to light decades later. Elizabeth Keane, divorced after her husband came out as gay, the mother of teenaged Zach, returns from her home in New York to Buncarragh, Ireland, near Kilkenny. Her task is a familiar one: go through her recently deceased mother's belongings and decide what to do with the house on Convent Hill where she grew up.

It's inevitable during a process like this that Elizabeth might discover things her mother hadn't shared with her—or, in fact, with anyone. First she finds a bundle of letters detailing the courtship of her parents. Elizabeth has no memory of her father, who died when she was a baby. It's an odd tale that reveals a shameful past, leading her to dig more deeply into the story. However, a second factor comes into play: she has fallen heir to not one but two houses. The second, known as Castle House, which belonged to her father, Edward Foley, is on the coast, near Cork. Why the house should fall to her is a mystery.

A Keeper is told in alternating "Now" and "Then" chapters that detail Elizabeth's search for information about events that happened some forty years in the past and, in parallel, the story of Patricia Keane and how Elizabeth came to be born. Although Patricia's tale begins in the 1970s, it feels like a much earlier age because of the simplicity of the near-rural Irish life in that period.

Patricia, who had spent years looking after her own mother, met Edward Foley through an ad in the Farmers’ Journal. Though he wrote lovely letters, their first meetings were strained and awkward. Each time, Patricia told herself there was no future for them together. The next time she visits, though, seduced by a floral delivery, Patricia's life takes a turn no one could have seen coming.

While struggling to come to terms with her past, Elizabeth is also dealing with the present: her son Zach, who was supposed to be in San Francisco with his father while she was abroad, lied about his agenda. Once the truth emerges—he is with his former tutor, a much older woman with whom he has become involved—Elizabeth is beside herself with anger. The complications don't end there.

Patricia's misadventures in Castle House are harrowing and strange, with Mrs. Foley playing a kind of Annie Wilkes. Readers might wonder at Patricia's relative complacence about her situation and her repeated willingness to forgive Edward for his part in her plight. Edward's behavior is also difficult to fathom and Mrs. Foley is off the charts crazy. Still, it's a compelling story, especially when woven together with Elizabeth's uncovering of facts a bit at time. Elizabeth thinks she's discovered the biggest secrets only to learn shortly thereafter something even more stunning.

The final truth is something Elizabeth never learns: it is revealed to readers in the only passage in the book not told from the point of view of Patricia or her daughter. The parallels between what befalls Elizabeth and her son and Patricia's story are a little bit tidy, but this is, after all, a story (although the seeds were planted by something Norton's own mother told him), and a certain degree of symmetry and tidiness is to be expected.

Ultimately, it is a good story well told by a raconteur who knows how to observe and convey what he has seen.